To The Fairest
by Shadow Logic
Summary: Chat Noir gets wind of his kiss with Ladybug on Valentine's Day, and the consequences alter their relationship. Canon Divergence from Ep. 10
1. Apple of Discord

Adrien Agreste had, at fifteen, developed a very refined ability to filter. He could wander the Les Halles mall with Nino for two solid hours without noticing the twenty odd posters with his face on them, plastered to walls and windows.

The first time Nino had asked about it, Adrien had tried to explain how alien his own image became after all the editing and processing. "When I model, it's not me. I can be happy or angry, or really sad…it's all the same. Modeling is about what they want you to show the world, not you. I mean…look."

He'd pulled out his tablet, scrolling through ads of the first brand name that came to his head, and held his airbrushed, poised face up against a candid picture of him with an ice cream cone, courtesy of Alya.

"I kinda see it. It's you, but without what makes you, well…you."

So when news of Chat Noir started cropping up in regular newspapers, and later in tabloids and gossip press, Adrien discovered he was perfectly capable of doing the same thing.

Unless, that is, the news involved Chat Noir _and_ Ladybug.

It wasn't like he went out of his way to find these articles and videos, of course. But once in a while, if the title spurred his interest enough, he'd give in to the glaringly obvious click-baits in his social media accounts, and maybe laugh a little at how enamoured Paris was with the idea of Ladybug and his alter ego together. Teen Vogue's "10 Reasons why Chat Noir and Ladybug should be an item" had been a favorite of his, and he'd only clicked on the circulating link to a fanfic once.

Other than mild emotional scarring from that one fanfic, Adrien found the articles one of the (few) pleasantly hilarious sides of being a superhero.

Until February the 15th.

* * *

"'Amazing Video – Chat Noir and Ladybug, a couple?'" The video description strategically cut off after that, and the thumbnail showed a slightly fuzzy Fontaine du Palmier. Classic click-bait.

"I'll never get people's obsession with love. Or with you." Plagg happily shoved another piece of Camembert into his mouth, as if to show the people just what ought to be important.

Adrien ignored his kwami's noisy gnawing and let the cursor hover over the play button, curious but unsure. Yesterday's fight had been in the fountain, so the footage was probably real.

And probably had prime highlights of just how much of a brute he'd been to Ladybug.

"Just my luck, getting hit with a hate spell on _Valentine's Day_." It had also struck precisely during his confession. The accompanying sigh sounded pathetic, even to him.

The cursor was dragged away resolutely.

…then again, this was probably his only chance to really know what had happened the day before. Ladybug had been far too nice (and a little vague) about it, and for all that Adrien knew an Akuma's influence completely overrode everything else in a person, he'd been gnawed at by a faint sense of guilt for the past day and a half (with help from Plagg, who'd kindly reminded him that he'd said all sorts of 'horrible thoughtless' things until he'd been threatened with a steady diet of processed yellow cheese).

Quickly plugging in his earbuds, Adrien clicked play and braced himself for a humiliating one and a half minutes.

The video had been taken from one of the nearby shops, barely a street away from the commotion, and caught the scene in profile: it started with him in an aggressive crouch as Ladybug dropped onto the carved stone sphinxes from somewhere high above. A rapid hop-chase over the sphinxes ensued until he pounced, finally pinning her down.

Adrien felt his stomach clench with revulsion as he saw the telltale black sparks of the Cataclysm on his fist. He'd really meant to _use_ it on her.

But it was to the next few seconds to which Adrien would find himself returning insistently for the next few days.

Dark Cupid swooped in, heading for the fountain. Chat Noir glanced over his shoulder, nodded and returned to his prisoner, gloating, hand poised to strike.

Then, Ladybug put a hand on each side of his face, brought it down to hers, and kissed him. For twenty precious seconds.

* * *

Natalie heard the cry from the home office, two stories up. She was at Adrien's door within four minutes, the hulking mountain that was his bodyguard within five.

"Is everything alright in there?" She knocked twice and, hearing no answer, let herself in. The telltale sound of a boy tripping over a wheelie chair led them to Adrien's study; the boy was there, standing in the middle of the room with an innocent smile. The four screens of his computer were on, but there seemed to be nothing on them.

"We heard screaming."

"Ah, yeah, I-I tripped over the chair after seeing this…shocking video."

"Twice?"

"It was a really shocking video."

While that was good enough for Natalie personally, she was employed to be Mssr. Agreste's eyes and ears in regards to his child, and Gabriel Agreste would at least give his son a good, disbelieving stare before leaving. She did it, just for effect.

"If you're sure."

"I'm sure. Thank you Natalie. Thank you, Beaumont."

She noticed the empty packets of Camembert on a decorative side table as she turned for the door. "And Adrien, try to remember to throw these away. The smell might set in."

"Yes, right away."

She closed the door and made it five steps down the hallway before an excited whoop came from the room.

Hands to her temples, Natalie wondered just how she'd survive the rest of Adrien's teen years.

* * *

"She kissed me!"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you say so!" Adrien half pranced, half danced to the study windows.

"Because she told you."

"All that about a kiss after the Akuma was caught…"

"Yeah, 'parently kissing broke Dark Cupid's influence on you."

"But why didn't you tell me! You just kept going on and on about how I told her I loathed her!" Because Adrien Agreste's humiliation just _had_ to include using Shakespearean insults on the girl he loved desperately.

"I was getting to that part. Then you told me to shut up and threatened me with…yellow cheese squares from the plastic foil...eugh…" Plagg cringed and shuddered dramatically at the very thought.

"Ladybug kissed me…and I can't remember a thing." But even though the thought saddened him, Adrien felt increasingly like an ice cream cone in the sun, thawing and melting from the warm, golden joy.

Ladybug had kissed him. Of course, it had all been part of the plan to save him from the hate-inducing spell, but she hadn't gone around kissing any other of the Akuma victims.

And she hadn't seemed repulsed. She'd been a little embarrassed, of course, and he hadn't really understood why until now. She'd also been quick to fall back into their usual repartee, so it wasn't very likely that she'd be traumatized for life.

Adrien picked himself off the floor. Lying on his desk was the mysterious Valentine card that had answered his poem. He traced a finger across the red ink wistfully: he'd handed the rest of the cards to Natalie. This was the only one he'd kept.

A kiss from Ladybug. A mysterious Valentine.

If nothing else, Chat Noir would have a few things to say to his Lady the next time they met.


	2. Enter Aphrodite

"What's wrong, Marinette?"

"Wha-nothing! Nothing!" The girl, who'd been languishing at her desk, flashed Tikki a toothy grin that seemed to hurt her face and turned back down to stare at her tablet.

"You've been staring at the same page for half an hour."

"Well, Sleeping Beauty is a-a deep story that takes it time to, ah…sink in! That's right! Sink in."

"Well, then you should start by going to the right page."

Marinette's eyes finally focused on the open file, making sense of the letters. She was in the title page…of the wrong story. "Donkey Skin." The titles weren't remotely close to each other, not in English, not in French.

She could not have been more busted if she'd tried.

Wordlessly, Marinette plunked her forehead onto the edge of her desk. It hurt. "Ow." When she lifted her face again, a lovely red line had blossomed across her forehead.

"You've been like this all day." Tikki hovered in front of her, pressing a tiny hand soothingly to the line her protégé had pushed into her own head.

"I can't concentrate on anything. And I can't tell _why_!"

"It's not Adrien again, is it?"

At the mere mention of the name, Marinette's face immediately transformed. Her eyes lit up, her mouth stretched into a goofy smile, and her back snapped ramrod straight. Then, not a second later, all the light seemed to escape her in a flash, and the frown returned. "Ugh, no, I can always tell when it's him."

"Me too. You get all smiley. But I thought you might have been ruminating over that unsigned Valentine's card again."

"Oh no Tikki, I'm over that." If the lack of calls with heartfelt declarations of love was any indication, she'd either not signed the card…or it had met the fate of so many other kilograms of fan mail.

 _You have to remember Adrien's a celebrity, Marinette. He must get tons and tons of fanmail daily, more so on Valentine's Day. It might be days before he sees your card. If he even sees it. Oh no, what if he has his secretary sort through his mail first!? She'd never know about the poem! She'd just think it's another piece of crazy from some fan or another and feed it to the shredder!_

Marinette's imagination immediately provided her with wonderful, detailed scenes of her lovingly crafted, heart-shaped card being shredded into tiny strips as an inexplicably pointy-toothed Natalie cackled over the mess. Sadness, like a ton of bricks, clobbered her over the head, and she drooped onto her tablet in misery.

Tikki flew to a point directly above the distraught girl's head. "Yeah, that's more of an 'angsting over a boy' face." Shaking her head slightly, the little kwami proceeded to swoop down and gently pull Marinette's face back up by one of her pigtails. "Come on Marinette, don't let this get the better of you."

Marinette gave the situation a good, hard, objective look. What was she feeling?

She was nervous, for one. Something wasn't sitting quite well with her. Whatever it was kept trying to creep into her awareness, but the instant it seemed ready to manifest, she'd shove it away forcefully.

Like she was afraid of even thinking it…

Her chair nearly overturned when truth slapped her in the face not a second later. "Oh no, I am not losing it over that kiss!"

"The kiss with Chat Noir?"

Had it been anyone other than Tikki asking her, Marinette would have lied and backpedaled madly. She was not supposed to be losing a single minute remembering a perfectly meaningless kiss, and with her cocky lump of a partner no less! But Tikki was, quite literally, the only person…er, being in the world to whom Marinette could be perfectly open.

"No…I mean yes. I mean…!" She scrubbed at her face once, hard. "I never thought I'd be in a situation like that with him. He's just so smug and infuriating and, augh! But when he kissed me back…"

Her fingers found her lips. "When he kissed back, he was so gentle and careful, and not selfish at all. And I really don't want to think of it, but I do. And it makes me feel a little confused."

Tikki floated to face her directly. For a second, perhaps two, the little creature's blue eyes turned deep and astute, and Marinette remembered that she was in the company of a magical guardian well over 5,000 years old.

The moment passed, and Tikki simply smiled. "You're probably just realizing Chat Noir isn't as selfish and vain as he appears. You're really hard on him sometimes, Marinette."

Marinette looked at her kwami thoughtfully. For how old she was, Tikki was always respectful of her protégé's freedom, letting her react rashly and sometimes even stupidly, even though she probably knew better. More than once, Marinette had suspected that Tikki noticed a lot more than she let on, and opted for silence.

But she also knew that, whatever her reasons, Tikki was probably acting in her best interest.

"Maybe. Why am I so hung up on the kiss, though?"

"At your age, kisses are generally a big deal."

That much was true, Marinette conceded. "You really think I'm hard on Chat Noir?"

Tikki's large eyes blinked kindly up at her. "Sometimes. I know his flirting and his posturing get on your nerves sometimes, and that he's not as resourceful as you, but he's not a bad guy. And he always does what he has to."

"I think you're right." Having Chat Noir turned against her yesterday had opened Marinette's eyes to just how important he was to their duo: for all that he was all about comic relief most of the time, he was an able fighter, agile and strong.

He was also surprisingly selfless, she realized with a pang. Yesterday marked the second time he'd taken a direct hit for her.

Something quite a lot like guilt wrung Marinette's heart.

"It's easy to get caught up in appearances, especially when it's exactly what the other person wants. Your job, as both Marinette and Ladybug, is to always try to look past them. It's one of the most important lessons a human can learn."

"You're right Tikki. As always." Chat Noir's bewildered green eyes popped up in her memories. She'd never seen him quite as wrong-footed as he'd been right then, after waking up from the Akuma's influence. She'd been a little short to him, partly because both their Miraculous' energies were running out, partly because she was just a little wrong-footed herself.

Marinette was suddenly deeply unsure of whether she was eager to see Chat Noir again, or eager to have a nice long break from Akumas so she could sort out her feelings before that.

"Guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it." She went through the Perrault file to the correct story, becoming absorbed in Sleeping Beauty until it was time to return to school for the second half of the day.


	3. Cat out of the bag

_Pole. Leap. Pole. Leap._

Chat Noir flew above the rooftops, only slowing when he judged his staff too short to vault the distance with. Then he'd retract it and run, sometimes even lope on all fours, searching for the appropriate gap between buildings, the most inviting balcony, only to take to the air again.

Patrolling had been his idea. At the beginning, after Hawk Moth had first addressed the people of Paris, Ladybug had figured that they should simply lie in wait for the next Akuma attack. That was what they'd been given the Miraculouses for, and anything beyond that seemed to be an abuse of its power.

Two days later, Chat Noir swooped in to rescue a team of window-washers from a malfunctioning scaffold on the upper floors of the Tour Les Poissons.

He'd barely had his feet on the ground for ten minutes when the built-in communicator in his staff rang for the first time.

"Saw me on the news, did you?"

"Show off."

"You like me that way." He'd smiled as he imagined a certain pair of bluebell eyes rolling in disgust. So endearingly predictable.

"Ha ha. Good work though, kitty."

"Thanks." A pause. "So, you don't have to agree with me on this. But I think we ought to do some extracurriculars sometimes. Maybe not all the time, I mean, this hero thing is a side job for me too. But on the off days…"

Thus, the new heroes of the City of Lights would sometimes add cat-rescuing, robbery-foiling and fight-de-escalating to their extensive resumés.

And while few things thrilled an over-protected teenager's heart like flying over the houses and buildings like a shadow, patrols were the kind of things he didn't need his partner for.

 _There's basically little to no chance of us meeting right now. Not unless something catastrophic happens._

His otherwise impressive sigh got lost in the opposing jet stream.

* * *

A wistful Chat eventually found his way to the roof of the Palais de Chaillot, where not even a picturesque view of the Eiffel Tower and the gardens did anything for his spirits.

That thought, however, did find a way to tickle him. _I'm giving Batman a run for his money with this brooding above the city stuff._

A prickling sensation in his awareness made him look over his shoulder, just in time to see a lithe, familiar figure land gracefully on a vault.

He was turning and opening his mouth before his mind caught up with him. "M'lady. Fancy meeting you here."

"Chat!" Ladybug would never admit it of course, but there was a subtle note of relief, threaded in right along with her annoyance. "What are you doing here?"

"Patrolling. You?"

"I…kind of like the Trocadéro at night." Well, that was a first. It usually took Akuma-level crisis situations to get his lady to give him an inch.

But he was wary of mistaking an offering for an opening. "Missed me?"

"I saw you two days ago."

"Ah yes. On Valentine's Day." There was a winning smile on his face, but his heart intended to hammer its way clean out from behind his ribs at that point.

He'd often wondered at how wearing the mask brought out a side of him he rarely indulged in, cheeky and confident. No matter how besotted he was with the girl looking confusedly at him right now, Chat Noir could always say _something_ where everyday Adrien would have drawn an embarrassing blank.

"Yes…?"

"My sources told me of certain interesting happenings that day." Perhaps there _was_ something about the mask, the ring, perhaps the Miraculous itself, which changed its wearer. The conversation was both part of his confession and a distractor as he circled, with feline subtlety, ever closer to his prey. But his heart never slowed down, not a hair.

"Huh? What do you-oh. OH."

"Yeah."

"You know-!"

"Yup!"

Despite his probably quite goofy expression, there was open fear in Ladybug's eyes. Hands reaching down warned him she'd be running to the roof's edge and grappling away in seconds.

Had he been a quarter of a meter further, she might have managed.

 _Too late now, buggy._ With a fencer's speed, Chat Noir lunged, not towards Ladybug, but towards her side. Right in the middle of the path she'd intended for her escape. She bounced harmlessly off his chest, and found her hands delicately cupped in his once she recovered.

"Chat Noir-!"

"You _kissed_ me!"

"It-it was-! The Akuma…!"

"See, I'm all for getting the bad guy in the end. But you've been pretty tight-lipped about it, buggy. Even for you."

"I was embarrassed alright!? I wasn't any more thrilled about it than you!"

That would have been a fatal stab, to the very center of his heart, had it not been for the slight tremble of her voice, and the complete lack of resistance to his hands on hers. He let one of them go in favor of pressing it over his chest. "A scratch, milady."

He let her go, trying not to feel too offended at the shock on her face. "Y'know, for all the cringing you do, I'd never throw myself on you. Never have. Never will."

"I never said that." Said with the conviction of a heroine. With a tragically unconvincing fiddling of red-and-black gloved fingers.

 _Well, I've pushed her enough. Time for an elegant retreat._

With a discrete flourish, Chat Noir brought out his staff. "All I really wanted to do was let you know the cat was out of the bag. It's ungentlemanly to kiss a lovely dame and then act like it never happened." A tap had the staff elongated, another step had him sweeping Ladybug a very deep bow, one that would have had the Agreste Master of etiquette wetting himself in pride. "I'll see you soon, M'lady. Don't think about us too hard though: being in love? It's easy."

Her indignant splutter followed him all the way past the Eiffel Tower and back to Agreste Mansion, for a plan to capture his wayward love had finally begun to form.

* * *

"Oh that infuriating, self-centered, _bleargh_!"

"Self-centered bleargh?" Marinette turned fully around in horror, only to find Tikki hovering behind her.

"Tikki?"

"You detransformed a few minutes ago."

As her kwami's presence clearly indicated. Marinette knew her earrings must have given her fair warning. "I guess I've been too busy…well…"

"Raging?"

"Yeah, that works." Marinette huffed with disappointment and went to sit on the edge of a cornice. "I thought being worked up over the kiss was the worst of it. Now, I get to endure Chat Noir knowing about it too."

"I don't know Marinette. That didn't go too terribly." The harried girl felt her kwami's tiny hands gently brushing at her bangs. "I said it before, and I'll say it again: Chat Noir isn't the worthless scoundrel you make him out to be sometimes."

"Scoundrel?"

"Yeah, scoundrel. And knave. And lily-livered, elf-skinned stock-fish." Tikki flicked her forehead playfully with one of her antennae. "When you get to be thousands of years old, you can use whatever words you want."

Marinette had to giggle at that. "I'm sorry Tikki." Her kwami's gentle humor and the view from one of her favorite places in all of Paris took the edge off her mood. "So…what do you suggest I do?"

"Stop reacting to the person you think he is. You can't know his real identity, but you can get to know the person behind the bravado. That means misleading show of bravery, by the way." The little creature flew to perch on her shoulder. "Also, be honest with yourself about your feelings for him."

"WHAT!? What feelings! Tikki that's just ridiculous! I mean, I love Adrien!"

"I know, I know." Tikki's voice had the cadence of someone trying to settle an upset child. Which she was, Marinette conceded. "But that doesn't mean you can't be a little intrigued by Chat Noir sometimes. Denying feelings can make them stronger. Just let yourself feel _honestly_ and then you can panic about _how_ to act. And give him a chance."

"I am not going to accept his offers to go on a date."

"Did I say that?"

"…no."

"I just meant, give him a chance to show you who he is. Deep down, he's not a stock-fish."

Girl and kwami alike laughed at that. "OK Tikki, I won't get home before curfew as Marinette. Spots on!"


End file.
